


carve out the minutes

by sinkingsidewalks



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Post-Surgery Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 11:05:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16596680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkingsidewalks/pseuds/sinkingsidewalks
Summary: At the 2009 World Championships, Tessa throws up in a bathroom and Scott waits in the hallway.





	carve out the minutes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [konahau (naheka)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naheka/gifts).



> Alie asked for a 'vomit fic' (her words, not mine) in the gc and because I apparently had nothing better to do on this Sunday afternoon that idea spiraled into whatever this is.  
> Let me know what you think if you like, and if you want to find me on tumblr I'm @sinkingsidewalks there too.  
> This is a work of complete fiction.

Scott hovered in the concrete walled hallway outside the women’s washroom of a rink in Los Angeles. It was cold. Air conditioning rattled out of a vent above him and a clock ticked down the hall. 

He leaned on the wall. Then bounced on his skate guards, keeping his muscles loose. Then picked at an already bleeding cuticle on his thumb. He stuck it in his mouth to keep the blood off his costume. 

Someone’s coach or brother or friend called his name as they walked passed and said good luck. Mindlessly, he thanked them, slapped an open palm in a high five. He didn’t feel very lucky.

He tried to act casual, like maybe he was just waiting for her to fix her makeup, and he tried to _feel_ casual. He tried to believe it. That maybe her tights weren’t sitting quite right. Or she’d touched someone’s old, chewed up gum stuck under the edge of the boards and felt compelled to scrub the feeling of hard wax, still marked with the indentations of someone’s teeth, off her hands. Or a pin had fallen out of her hair. 

But none of it was true. 

He hovered. And he waited. 

There was still time, he wasn’t worried about that, it was a competition day and there was a familiarity to how they hurried then waited, then hurried some more and waited again. But he felt the clock ticking down to their skate, minutes running like beads of sweat crawling down his spine in a way he’d never experienced in any season prior. 

Usually he could focus, once they got to the rink, once they started skating. There was a goal ahead of him, and measured steps laid out to achieve it. So even when he felt the pressure, the eyes on him and his own aching need for perfection, he could manage a kind of calm.

Lately though, everything was counting down. 

And it wasn’t just how long until their names were called over the loudspeaker that day, there was also the number of minutes until the Original Dance, then the Free. How long it would be until they were on the podium – or they weren’t – at a World Championship again. There was the next season’s training and the start of another Grand Prix circuit. He could feel every damn second until they’d be in Vancouver and how much time it had been _since_ her surgery. 

Six months, nearly getting to seven, and she was still in so much pain. 

So much pain that the only way she could get through practices and warm ups amidst their competitors – and with the judges watching – was to spend ten minutes choking up stomach bile in the women’s bathroom once they got off the ice while he hovered uncomfortably outside the door. He stood there walking through their programs, or running calorie counts, stacking the food she hadn’t eaten against the strain she was putting her body through. It was a simple calculation, energy in vs. energy out, and even though he knew – and he knew that she knew – that the scale was tipping too far the wrong way he couldn’t say anything. 

He’d tried to follow her in, back in January at Nationals, when they still believed it was only temporary pain, a process in her recovery. She’d yelled at him, actually properly yelled, like she hadn’t since she was probably thirteen, her voice cracking in her throat and shattering against the cold tile walls and he’d been so shocked he’d backed out of the room without protest. 

It wasn’t like he’d never seen her puke before. There was the time when they were kids at the Ilderton fair and they’d split a bucket of mini donuts then he’d dared her to go on the Tilt-A-Whirl. He’d held her hair back as she’d lost the donuts and an earlier hotdog into a big bag lined garbage can beside the ride even though he’d been only ten or eleven at the time. There were Friday nights when he was driving her back up to London for the weekend where her skin would turn ashen, and he’d be pulling over before she could even ask or all the times she had too much to drink, and he’d felt tasked to put her to bed. 

But they still weren’t talking, not really, not like they used to. He couldn’t share a whole thought with just the tip of his head anymore. Her one word responses were stilted not intuited. When they talked in half sentences, it was because they were tripping over each other, not because he knew she already understood whatever he had to say in three words instead of seven. 

It was getting better, slowly, with the help of their Marina mandated honest-to-god marriage counsellor, but there was still distance between them that he’d never considered possible. 

Tessa had been his right hand for most of his life, and suddenly it was like someone had switched it with his left. For months, his wires were all crossed, everything was backwards. But then he’d adjusted, just a little, and slowly, they were rewriting the neural pathways together. 

Tessa came out of the washroom. She was pale underneath her makeup, more so than usual, and even though she’d done a good job of hiding it he could see the exhaustion etched into her eyes. 

He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t allowed to say anything. He wished he could reassure her – and himself – even though he knew how she would respond. 

That was her one rule. Once they got into the rink, no one could ask how her legs were feeling (terrible) or if she needed anything (double amputations below the knee, thanks) or if she was well enough to skate (she wasn’t, she never was.) Once they got into the rink they were competitors. They would show no weakness. They were going to compete. They were going to win. 

Tessa lived and breathed that. She willed it into actuality. He had no idea how. 

They started walking down the hall wordlessly. She shivered in the chill of the rink. 

He wanted to put her arm around her shoulder and pull her into his chest to keep her warm. And to apologize for being such an asshole in October or just make a dumb joke that would make her laugh. He wanted to be able to turn back the clock and do it all over again and not hurt her. 

Instead, he took her hand, squeezed her cold fingers in his warm ones. She squeezed back and, just for a second, everything slowed down again.


End file.
